If you - or someone you know - are having thoughts about suicide, call 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Calls are connected to a certified crisis center nearest the caller's location. Services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you - or someone you know - are having thoughts about suicide, call 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Calls are connected to a certified crisis center nearest the caller's location. Services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Cannot Feel Pleasure, Feels Like I Get Nothing Done, I'm Ashamed

The truth is I feel guilty. I feel ashamed of what I have become, all the while knowing I have not chosen to be this way and trying to do everything within my power to change it. I simply tell people I'm a workaholic, and that is true enough because anytime I can gather the concentration and the stamina I work as hard as I can. But really I spend more time than I would care to admit in bed, paralyzed with fear, emotional instability, and despite all the coffee I drink and herbal energy pills I take a surprising literal lack of physical energy. I do not understand it, this paralyzing nothingness. I do not understand the mood swings or the apathy toward all of humanity and why I just can't seem to get anything done despite the fact that I actually have no shortage of ambition, theoretically speaking. At the end of the day I know I actually have spent the entire day to the best of my ability doing things, and yet when I add up the sum total of things I actually got done it seems like next to nothing. At the bottom of it all seems to be some version of dysthymia, the complete inability to experience pleasure, an absolute numbness that I first noticed at age eight. At the best of times I seem to have a sort of indifference to the things going on around me, at the worst a silent prayer to whatever god might be out therethat he/she/it grant me a sort of Donnie Darko ending and let some giant piece of debris fall through the ceiling and crush me so that it can all just end. I don't know what to do. I want to do things, I want to feel something, but no matter how bright a future it might seem like I have and no matter how hard I try I JUST DON'T FEEL ANYTHING…...

And yes, I have tried tons of medication and seen many different doctors. Nothing helped.

That would be quite a struggle to live with every day... I have felt many times that I can't immerse myself in life and really experience things. There's just something missing inside where I can't really get into things. Even playing with my daughter. I just feel like I'm doing it, going through the motions. Sometimes it's gotten better than it was.

I certainly have no advice or suggestions how you could change this. Just wanted to show some support. I really do hope you find a way to get out of this place you are in and be happy and feel again!

Many Blessings,SW

Not all those who wander are lost. - J.R.R. TolkienDon't let the muggles get you down. ― J.K. Rowling

I can't say that anything has really changed, I still feel just as numb and detached as ever. The emotions I experience are just horrible, and what is worse is that I realize they are not even MY emotions. Normal people feel an emotion as a rational reaction to something that's just happened in their life. I flip into a rage, a depression, a panic attack or whatever it might happen to be at the time for no reason at all and have to hide so no one sees it is happening. There is just a sudden flood of chemicals being released from my brain at a level of intensity you would not believe, so powerful that I have to lock myself in a room to avoid hurting someone or saying something I know I'll regret once I return to my senses. If this wasn't happening to me I wouldn't even believe it was possible. How the hell is it possible to experience severe, intense emotions so completely random in nature? My emotional mind knows I am feeling something and it is very, extremely real. Like being on a bad acid trip or something but I don't even do drugs. And yet my rational/logical mind sort of takes on the observer position and reminds me that it is not really me experiencing these things, yet it is my body and my mind and me who has to live through it. All I really want to know is WHY this is happening to me. I would like to think I am an intelligent enough person to come up with a solution if I could only find out why. Best guess right now is being treated like a lab rat by psychiatrists for 15+ years. God knows how many dozens of medications they put me on and took me off beginning at a time that I had just entered puberty. My family doctor got the brilliant idea to put my on Prozac and Tylenol 3 at age ten. Yes, I was severely depressed but it was because I was being abused at home and he knew it. Maybe if he had dealt with that instead of drugging me the depression would have been solved on its own. And if I hadn't been depressed and stressed out and seriously wanting to **** myself I wouldn't have had any headaches either. But that's just what doctors do, try to find the magic pill to solve it all rather than trying to solve the situation.